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Iraqi Qaeda Group Shifts to Remain a Threat

BAGHDAD — Even in its weakened state, the Iraqi insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains a dangerous foe that has shown resiliency in carrying out major terrorist attacks intended to destabilize Iraq as the country prepares for pivotal elections early next year, according to several top American commanders.

With its access to financing and fighters dwindling, the Qaeda affiliate in Iraq has shifted its tactics and strategy, husbanding resources to conduct less frequent but increasingly catastrophic attacks aimed at undermining public support for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government in the months leading up to national elections in March, the officers said.

“Al Qaeda has changed from a broad-based insurgency to a terrorist group trying to target the government,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of American forces in Iraq, said in a brief interview here.

American commanders blame Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for three major bombings in the past few months. On Dec. 8, several car bombs killed at least 121 people. On Oct. 25, suicide bombers destroyed three Iraqi government agency buildings, killing at least 155 people. And on Aug. 19, two suicide car bombers attacked the Finance and Foreign Ministries, killing at least 122 people.

The carefully planned attacks show Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s ability to continue to wreak havoc, even as the organization over all is under increasing pressure, American officials said.

“Al Qaeda is adapting themselves to the environment,” Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, said Saturday in an interview.

The militants are increasingly reliant on kidnappings and extortion schemes, including some in the oil production and cement sectors, to finance their operations, General Jacoby said.

Historically, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been an organization led by a small number of foreigners — like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who was killed in 2006 — but whose rank and file was made up largely of Iraqi foot soldiers. General Jacoby said he believed that some Iraqis now held senior leadership positions and were being opportunistic in picking their targets.

Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, the senior American commander in Baghdad, said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia still operated supply routes for fighters, ammunition and cash from the Syrian border and Euphrates River valley, but that the flow of insurgents into the country was down markedly in recent years.

During the height of the insurgency here in late 2006 and early 2007, more than 125 foreign fighters a month were flowing into Iraq, American military officials have said. That figure has dwindled to a trickle of lethal suicide bombers, General Bolger said.

General Jacoby and General Bolger accompanied Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a tour of the Abu Ghraib area as part of the admiral’s weeklong visit to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Admiral Mullen said that American intelligence reports had not detected a large flow into Iraq of foreign fighters, who have been responsible for suicide bombings in the past.

In parallel with the attacks, General Jacoby said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was also waging a propaganda campaign centered on the narrative that the militants were forcing the United States to leave Iraq and to abandon the Iraqi government.

He said the United States must forcefully counter that narrative by repeatedly explaining that the drawdown of American combat forces in Iraq by September 2010 and the complete withdrawal of all troops by the end of 2011 were painstakingly negotiated with the Iraqi government, and that the United States would remain a staunch ally of Iraq even after its troops returned home.

A version of this article appears in print on December 21, 2009, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Iraqi Qaeda Group Shifts to Remain a Threat. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe